which occur through His power and choice, and so forth. This is because it is said:

“Knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, and the like are attributes of perfection. If the Lord did not possess them, He would possess their opposites, such as ignorance, incapacity, deafness, dumbness, and muteness. These are attributes of deficiency, and Allah is free of them. He must therefore possess the attributes of perfection.”

It is also said:

“Any perfection established for a created being that entails no deficiency whatsoever is all the more fitting for the Creator, exalted is He. Any deficiency from which a created being is free, the Creator, glorified is He, is all the more deserving of being free from. Indeed, any perfection possessed by an existent being that entails no deficiency is more fitting for the Necessary Existent than for any other existent being.”

Other such arguments are set out at length elsewhere.

If the negators among the Jahmiyyah, the philosophers, and the Bātiniyyah say:

“These attributes stand in opposition as privation and possession. Thus, denying one does not necessarily establish the other unless the subject is capable of receiving both. As for what cannot receive either, such as an inanimate object, it is described as neither living nor dead, neither blind nor sighted.”

They may be answered in several ways. For example, it may be said:

“This is a terminological convention of yours. Arabic usage makes no such distinction, and rational meanings are not determined by mere terminological conventions.”

It may also be said:

“What cannot receive these attributes, such as an inanimate object, is more deficient than what can receive them